Pedram Badari
Born in the city of Sine (Sanandaj) Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan), Pedram is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and architect, working in installation, site-specific, performance art, social practice, and sculpture. Pedram is based in the Detroit Metro Area, Michigan. He has been featured in numerous national and international solo and group art exhibitions since 2010, such as Victoria and Albert Museum London 2012, Documenta 13th Video Import-Export program, Video Nomad Tokyo 2015, Art Basel Basel Switzerland 2014, Freiburg Museum for New Art, Germany 2016, Walker Art Center Minneapolis MN, 2019, Weisman Museum Minneapolis 2019, Soo Visual Art Center 2021, Ashville Center for Craft, Ashville, NC, 2022, BBA International Winner Prize exhibition at Berlin Contemporary, Germany 2023. He has been selected to artist residencies and fellowships internationally and has been featured in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Turkey, and The U.S. He is the recipient of the 2012 Magic of Persia and Delfina Foundation Award, Jerome Fellowship Commission for Franconia Sculpture Park 2017, Vermont Studio Center Award 2015-2020, StarDust Fund for his fellowship and art residency at Weisman Art Museum, he is the recipient of National Endowment For the Art Fellowship at MacDowell 2021, Lukcis Scholars Joint Research Awardee 2022, and BBA International Artist Prize Berlin Germany Second Award winner 2023. Baldari has worked as an Assistant Professor in Studio Art at the University of Minnesota 2018-2020, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, College of Visual Art and Design 2020-2023, and currently is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Penny W. Stamps School Art and Design, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Pedram’s most recent projects are collaborative and site-specific, such as His most recent Land Art Project in Hawraman Takht Kurdistan, The Heart of a Mountain.
“An intermedia exploration of the themes of land through the indigenous-native-stateless lens versus citizenship-state-property, modes of colonialism, displacement-immigration, and conflict serve as the main method in my work. In short, the intersectionality of power dynamics and systems of legitimacy in and out of the arts form a perspective through which I locate my work in today’s contemporary art practice. Decades of Kurdish ethnic cleansing, a decade of war (Iran-Iraq) taking place in my homeland Kurdistan, and the systemic oppression of my people through linguicide, land grabbing, poverty, forced migration, and ecocide of our native lands by the Iranian regime tie my narrative to that of the natives of North America and other stateless nations across the globe. This functions as the cradle of my art-making processes, investigating different layers of the Anthropocene and the available possibilities of acts of healing for both human and nonhuman through art.”